# Great But Flawed Movies (and how you'd fix 'em) **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [April 17, 2004, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-but-flawed-movies-and-how-youd-fix-em/240446 "2004-04-17T00:34:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Scupper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b9bd4f/32.png) [@Scupper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scupper)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2006, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-but-flawed-movies-and-how-youd-fix-em/240446/81 "2006-01-25T16:51:43Z")
> [@Anonymous Coward](#): > > I’ve heard that the “same thing that happens to everything else” line was supposed to have been implied rather than spoken, which makes the sequence a little less stupid. However I can’t find a cite for it. Can anyone else confirm this? In an [interview](http://www.avclub.com/content/node/24238) with the Onion AV Club, Whedon said this about that line: > [@](#): > > Everybody remembers that as the worst line ever written, but the thing about that is, it was supposed to be delivered as completely offhand. [Adopts casual, bored tone.] “You know what happens when a toad gets hit by lightning?” Then, after he gets electrocuted, “Ahhh, pretty much the same thing that happens to anything else.” But Halle Berry said it like she was Desdemona. [Strident, ringing voice.] “The same thing that happens to everything eeelse!” ---
**Author:** ![Scupper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b9bd4f/32.png) [@Scupper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scupper)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2006, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-but-flawed-movies-and-how-youd-fix-em/240446/82 "2006-01-25T17:15:06Z")
Great but flawed movie: **The Abyss** Turn off the movie after Bud sends the message: LOVE U WIFE Great but flawed movie (previously mentioned): **Minority Report** Cut the last 20 minutes and the subplot that it lamely resolves. Let the movie end with the horrible but powerful revelation of who Cruise’s victim is, and the murder. Great but flawed movie: **Bladerunner** (either version) Genarally, use the director’s cut. Except the DC is only intelligible if you’ve seen the original version. You need some expository speech, but the original’s narration is a bit too flat (supposedly intentionally on Ford’s part). Fix the muddled exchange between Bryant and Deckard in which we end up with a confusing continuity error about how many replicants there are (one replicant was cut from the movie, but not from the count of how many are on the loose). And (this is largely just because I find it distasteful) cut the bit where Deckard throws Rachel around and gets all alpha wolf macho on her. It’s stupid. Great but flawed movie: **Return of the Jedi** Cut the ewoks and replace them with Wookiees. Let Lando and the _Millennium Falcon_ perish heroically in the destruction of the Death Star (he is tragically flawed because of his betrayal in **Empire** and it’s already set up in the script that Han will never see the ship again, for God’s sake!) If you’re working with the Special Edition, cut the CGI dance number in Jabba’s palace. Kill Boba Fett with Luke’s lightsaber rather than with wacky jetpack hijinx. Add at least ten more minutes of Leia in the slave girl outfit. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![rainy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c2a13f/32.png) [@rainy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rainy)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2006, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-but-flawed-movies-and-how-youd-fix-em/240446/83 "2006-01-25T19:54:19Z")
> [@JoeSki](#): > > **Army of Darkness**. It would have been perfect with less three stooges jokes, and humor that at times that was downright hokey, and a little more action and horror. I know these guys where merely background scenery for Bruce Campbell’s great part, but make the Knights and their castle and their castle’s location seem at least kind of plausible. What was that castle protecting there, dirt? Whenever the focus switches over to those guys, the movie drags horribly. Where are we going to ‘hide’ the book an undead army is coming for? In an alcove visible from everywhere inside the castle walls – yeah, that’s the ticket. -rainy ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2006, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-but-flawed-movies-and-how-youd-fix-em/240446/84 "2006-01-25T21:52:17Z")
The thing that bugged me about Pleasantville was that when the mob started to get upset and hateful about everyone turning color, they should have turned color too! The idea of the black and white Pleasantville was that it was artificial and fake and removed passion and emotion from the characters. Aren’t hate, fear, and rage emotions? Weren’t hate, fear, and rage excised from 50s sitcoms along with lust and intellectual curiosity? I’d have had some people become black when they turned colors. Small American towns in the 50s had black people, but 50s TV pretended that they didn’t exist. Not made a big deal out of it, Pleasantville wasn’t supposed to be a racial allegory, but it would have been interesting for some of the townspeople to be in whiteface during the BW scenes. When the conservative status-quo townspeople form themselves into a lynch mob there’s no way they could stay black and white. I kept expecting their hate and fear to colorize them, and it is completely inconsistent of the movie to leave them black and white. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2006, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-but-flawed-movies-and-how-youd-fix-em/240446/85 "2006-01-26T01:58:37Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > **Trading Places** had some of the best comedy scenes of the 80s (or any other decade- Eddie Murphy was at his funniest), but the sideplot with the gorilla suit and Franken & Davis seemed like it was written five minutes before it was shot by writers who’d been watching an episode of Gilligan’s Island while stoned. > . At least the gorilla suit eventually served as the instrument of retribution on Mr. Beeks. _Along Came Polly_ is by and large an enjoyable if lightweight movie, but they could have managed just fine without the ferret. While it was a hoot to see it in its little sweater, and presumably was meant to be the analog of Aniston’s somewhat flighty character, I didn’t need to see it continually crashing into walls. ---
**Author:** ![JDeMobray](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/85e7bf/32.png) [@JDeMobray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JDeMobray)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2006, 2:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-but-flawed-movies-and-how-youd-fix-em/240446/86 "2006-01-26T02:58:53Z")
> [@Bryan Ekers](#): > > The Mel Gibson movie _Ransom_ is a scary little kidnapping drama that turns into an idiotic chase in the last 15 minutes when Gary Sinise, a corrupt police officer who headed a gang that kidnapped Gibson’s son, shows up at Gibson’s apartment to collect a cash reward. This gives the traumatized boy a chance to recognize Sinise’s voice (he never actually saw Sinise during the ordeal), which prompts Gibson to chase Sinise through the city in moral indignation; a chase that eventually leads to Sinise’s death. > > Had this forced happy ending (letting the audience satisfy its bloodlust and get a sense of closure) been chopped and Sinise simply got away with the reward (there is no earthly reason Sinise _has_ to go to Gibson’s apartment) it would have been a much better movie. Along the same lines, _Collateral_ is a scary little thriller about a cabbie name Max, played by Jamie Foxx, who ends up taking a hired killer Vincent, played by Tom Cruise, around to five of his targets in one night in Los Angeles. It is a wonderful film until the final thirty or so minutes where it turns into a generic action movie complete with Max improbably saving the girl and killing the big bad guy. That’s not what the movie was about up until the endgame sequence starts. The movie would have worked much, much better IMHO if they had rolled credits immediately after the scene where a fed-up and pissed off Max finally calls Vincent on all of his nihilistic crap and runs his cab off the road with both of them inside. Vincent climbs out of the wreck and takes off running away from Max, who pulls himself out of the cab and takes a deep breath. Max has won right there, not just in the sense of surviving the night and getting away from Vincent, but also in terms of rejecting Vincent’s view of the world. The movie can, and should, end right there. ---
**Author:** ![DMark](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e68b1a/32.png) [@DMark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DMark)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2006, 6:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-but-flawed-movies-and-how-youd-fix-em/240446/87 "2006-01-26T06:33:18Z")
OK, this is considered blasphemy, but **Casablanca** …my all time favorite film that I have watched so many times I lost count years ago. The scenes in Paris just don’t fit with the great line, “we’ll always have Paris”…they seem forced, unlike the rest of the film that flows to perfection. It is the only time in the film that I _don’t_ feel any sparks between Rick and Ilsa. I think I would have shown a more desperate connection between the two…considering the events that were unfolding outside their bedroom window. They should have been more intense, as if to drown out the impending doom about to hit the city. Instead, it seems like they are skipping down a field of marigolds and it is just so-out-of-place in this otherwise perfect film. ---
**Author:** ![cactus\_waltz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/74df32/32.png) [@cactus\_waltz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cactus_waltz)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2006, 12:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-but-flawed-movies-and-how-youd-fix-em/240446/88 "2006-01-26T12:17:42Z")
**Breakfast at Tiffany’s** : I would love to cut away any scene with Mickey Rooney as Mr. Yunioshi. What an outdated, stereotypical, borderline racist character! Doesn’t really fill any function either, except to call the cops on Audrey during her cocktail house party. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2006, 12:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-but-flawed-movies-and-how-youd-fix-em/240446/89 "2006-01-26T12:50:19Z")
**2010**. I think I’m one of the few people who liked this.It’s not the book, but it’s closer to Clarke than even 2001 was. But it desperately needs two things: 1.) Remove all of Roy Scheider’s voice-over narration. It’s distracting and insulting. Let the audience figure out what’s going on. It’s easier than in 2001. If they can’t figure it out, a little mystery won’t hurt. 2.) Replace the score with classical music a la 2001. You got the _look_ of the film down pat. I could go with a humanizing story full of character (the opposite of 2001), but you need to music to give it the feel of its original. ---
**Author:** ![Grossbottom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/ba8739/32.png) [@Grossbottom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grossbottom)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2006, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-but-flawed-movies-and-how-youd-fix-em/240446/90 "2006-01-26T14:32:48Z")
The Two Towers: The scene at Helm’s Deep, in the armory, before the battle. Aragorn is bitching about the upcoming fight, then Legolas starts chiming in, and then Aragorn screams at Legolas for bitching. And later Legolas is the one to apologize? Forget that. How about, “I’m sorry my friend…sorry you’re an unstable asshole who’s going to be king. How about I slink off back to Mirkwood before you start chopping people’s heads off, your freakishly tempermental majesty?” On what planet does that exchange make any sense at all? “THEN I SHALL DIE AS ONE OF THEM!” Please. I’d pay for the extended edition all over again just to get rid of that unspeakably awkward scene. Kingdom of Heaven: Chop out anything that leaves a positive impression of Balian, and show him for the weak link that he is. This movie would go from good to perfect as soon as it stopped trying to be an Orlando Bloom vehicle. Balian is selfish and weak, and in compensation for that and to the detriment of the city, he puts his personal morality before the needs of the people he’s sworn to protect. The good guys are Baldwin, Godfrey and Saladin…by Balian’s own motto, they are men because they make the world better. Balian doesn’t, and thus never becomes a man, and the kingdom of heaven is lost. The movie is unclear about this because it waffles. ---
**Author:** ![Slithy\_Tove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slithy_tove/32/18248_2.png) [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2006, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-but-flawed-movies-and-how-youd-fix-em/240446/91 "2006-01-26T17:14:36Z")
Perhaps if **Eyes Wide Shut** were set in 1910’a Vienna as originally written, we wouldn’t have disliked the movie and then been scolded by our betters for disliking it. Because in 1990’s NYC, nobody gave a shit if people were fucking and I couldn’t suspend disbelief for an alternate 1990’s NYC where they did. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2006, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-but-flawed-movies-and-how-youd-fix-em/240446/92 "2006-01-26T17:58:29Z")
> [@gobear](#): > > **Psycho** > > Remove the scene where the detective goes on and _on_ about tranvestism, and cut directly from Norman being captured to him in the cell, talking to himself in his mother’s voice. That scene was essential; the movie would probably have flopped without it. The point was to give the audience a bogus explanation so the less bright members who always need an explanation for everything wouldn’t nitpick the film. Nowadays, of course, people are willing to deal something without it being spelling out completely for them. Yessirree. You never see anyone asking questions like that around here. :rolleyes: For both **Dark City** and **The Dark Crystal** : Ditch the voiceover narration in the beginning. ---
**Author:** ![Roadfood](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/9fc348/32.png) [@Roadfood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roadfood)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2006, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-but-flawed-movies-and-how-youd-fix-em/240446/93 "2006-01-26T18:23:59Z")
**Blazing Saddles** Change the ending. To almost anaything else. The breaking of the fourth wall just does **not** work, it’s not very funny, goes on way too long, and just serves to basically invalidate the entire movie. Compare to **Monty Python and the Holy Grail** where the final breaking of the fourth wall worked pretty well (although even there, I think the movie would be improved if they hadn’t broken it). ---
**Author:** ![Scumpup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce73a5/32.png) [@Scumpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scumpup)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2006, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-but-flawed-movies-and-how-youd-fix-em/240446/94 "2006-01-26T18:28:09Z")
> [@wonder9](#): > > **The Philadelphia Story** Instead we get that stupid Tinkerbell in our faces. [Tinkerbell](http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b169/computerfreak12/tinkerbell.gif) is welcome to be in, or on, my face any time. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Rieux](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/aeb1de/32.png) [@Dr.Rieux](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Rieux)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2006, 4:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-but-flawed-movies-and-how-youd-fix-em/240446/95 "2006-01-27T04:10:37Z")
> [@Khadaji](#): > > Tarantino may be able to direct, but he should never ever try to act. If he wants to do a cameo, like the great Hitchcock, OK, but don’t try to act. Ditto for Spike Lee. ---
**Author:** ![wonder9](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c57346/32.png) [@wonder9](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonder9)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2006, 1:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-but-flawed-movies-and-how-youd-fix-em/240446/96 "2006-01-28T01:28:42Z")
> [@Scumpup](#): > > [Tinkerbell](http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b169/computerfreak12/tinkerbell.gif) is welcome to be in, or on, my face any time. Charming :rolleyes: [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-but-flawed-movies-and-how-youd-fix-em/240446.md?page=4)